BIC Medical – The Netherlands – Healthcare
The Challenge
Dispensing medicine is a sensitive business best left to professionals. Particularly in highly regulated markets like Germany and France, this creates a considerable workload for the trained pharmacists who are licensed to supply custom prescriptions. Developed by BIC Medical from the Dutch town of Elburg, Med2Morrow streamlines the process with a dispensing system that guarantees the precise, safe, and reliable provision of custom prescriptions, sealed in bags or blister trays for easy use. For BIC Medical, protecting the software behind Med2Morrow is a matter both of patient safety and of the reliability of its business model, as past experience with payment problems has shown.
The Solution
To protect their Med2Morrow solution, BIC Medical turned to Wibu-Systems for licensing and protection. Integrating CodeMeter protections proved easy, relying on CmDongles as license containers in the field. As pharmacists use the entire Med2Morrow solution offline, this represented a lean and straightforward option for delivering the licenses where they are needed.
The Result
Users of Med2Morrow systems can now use the dispensing machines only with the right licenses on CmDongles attached, and the system tracks in detail when the system is used and takes stock of the quantities of medicine dispensed to not only secure the solution from illicit use or tampering, but also to streamline the billing and maintenance process. Even though the Med2Morrow hardware has proven extremely reliable and low-maintenance, service teams of BIC Medical are on hand to support their users and regularly update the firmware and software as well as the necessary licenses – a simple and hassle-free process for the pharmacists on the ground.
Rutger Visscher, Director at BIC Medical
On the advice of a colleague company in the sector, we opted for the security and licensing technology of Wibu-Systems. The CodeMeter system determines whether the application software is working and whether the workflow in the drug dispensing machine is activated, for how long and for what quantity. And now we are assured that we will be paid for our efforts.
The Company
BIC Medical is the registered name of the company that supplies first-class solutions to medical professionals across the continent from its base in Elburg in the Netherlands. Med2Morrow is the trade name of the sophisticated software that controls the functionality of the medicine dispensing machines for use in the heavily regulated French and German pharmaceutical markets.
Protecting the system that protects patients’ health
Not all medicine comes prepackaged in a box. Many patients rely on custom prescriptions that combine specific amounts of different medicines. Medical institutions and care professionals often also prefer medicines readily portioned out for each patient, instead of leaving the often difficult work of dispensing the right pills and drugs in the right order to overworked care workers, let alone patients. Mistakes can put people’s health, even lives at risk. For pharmacies, both walk-in high-street outlets and institutional units, this means a considerable workload with little margin for error, taking up the valuable time of often highly trained professionals.
As more heavily regulated markets like France and Germany also place limits on who is allowed to dispense medicine, including restricting the number of pharmacies a trained pharmacist is allowed to operate, this creates urgent demand for technical solutions to streamline the process.
BIC Medical from the Dutch town of Elburg have taken up this call and responded to it with a new way of dispensing medicine: Med2Morrow. The system, originally from Japan and here offered under its European tradename, is a combination of intricate hardware and sophisticated software that can sort and dispense medicine to custom prescriptions. The actual machine is a feat of engineering with no fewer than 500 motors built in to pick, sort, and prepare the right cocktail of pills, which are then filled into bags or, in response to demand from medical institutions, in blister trays. Once filled, the containers are heat-sealed to prevent loss or tampering and then delivered to the dispensing pharmacist.
Behind this sophisticated hardware, there is even more sophisticated software to control the machine functions and track the dispensed medicine for both patient safety (pharmacovigilance) and billing purposes. After experiencing payment problems with distributors, BIC Medical realized that the sound protection and licensing system provided by Wibu-Systems made it possible to protect its IP and safeguard the billing process.
Following word of mouth recommendations, BIC Medical turned to Wibu-Systems for CodeMeter licensing. The integration process proved simple, with CodeMeter slotting into the process to monitor whether the on-board application is working and whether the dispensing workflows are correctly activated. With CodeMeter licensing, this means that the machine will only do its job if the right license is available, and the system keeps track of the quantities and operating times to facilitate the correct billing process. Customers pay for time of operation of the machine and/or the number of pills processed.
A unique aspect is that the Med2Morrow systems are operated offline. This was no issue for CodeMeter, as the licenses are kept on physical CmDongle containers. BIC Medical has service teams in place in its target markets in France and Germany to take care of servicing the machines’ software – with their complicated hardware proving extremely reliable and virtually maintenance-free – and update any firmware or licenses that require updates. As the licenses to use the Med2Morrow systems are always combined with maintenance contracts, there is no need for the pharmacists using the systems to worry about servicing their machines – leaving them the time to concentrate on their mission: Serving and advising their patients.